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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)#Issues_with_Jaynes'_proposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)#Issu...

Symmetry 8y ago
Huh, published in 1976. Somehow I'd assumed that this sort of hypothesis would have been proposed back in the 1930s when it's assumptions would have been a lot more credible.
- geofft 8y ago
  As Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion, "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets."
  - Symmetry 8y ago
    I'm really surprised that he and Dennet are so positive on the idea. In the humans running around today we can do experiments on we can clearly see that it's the same process that allows us to serialize experiences for to speak about them and serialize them to remember them. But I suppose before fMRI that work might not have been as convincing. And I suppose, as someone who does a lot of thinking without an internal narrative I feel a bit attacked by the whole idea.
    - knolax 8y ago
      >And I suppose, as someone who does a lot of thinking without an internal narrative I feel a bit attacked by the whole idea. When ideas like this and Sapir-Whorf pop up it really makes me wonder if maybe the social "sciences" are studied exclusively by some subset of the population that thinks entirely different from me. How else would they come to the conclusion that thoughts take the form of articulated monologues? Maybe I'm the outlier but it takes deliberate effort for me to serialize my thoughts into anything articulate. I mean do other people just hear "I didn't give the correct arguments to this function" in their head when they code?
      - sebastos 8y ago
        I doubt they do, but have you never had a sort of "heart-to-heart with yourself"? I'll sometimes take a walk with the explicit intention of having a good think, and whenever I do that, my thoughts absolutely take the form of internal monologue. I think if you're really thinking something through, on a subject you haven't really explored, the 'voice' manifests. Just my .02.
        Symmetry 8y ago
        People are different. There's a wide variety of extents to which people perceive their thoughts as comprising of words and also a wide variety of extents to which people are able to form mental imagery. For me, most thinking isn't verbal unless I'm thinking of explaining my thoughts to some one else. Sometimes this is annoying when I've worked something out for myself and I go to explain it but then this nice chunked[1] concept for a step but when I hit that concept I realize it doesn't correspond to a word and I have to go on a long, unexpected digression. But sometimes there are words for which I haven't chunked the underlying concept well and I just use that word in isolation inside my head. Also, some seem to be basically unable to form mental imagery and often assume that people are speaking in metaphor when they describe this. Some people are able to form mental imagery with fairly high fidelity to what their eyes see with very little effort. Personally I have an easy time with shapes but things don't tend to have colors unless I make a conscious effort. I sort of suspect that people who refer to people by name inside their heads have an easier time remembering names but AFAIK it hasn't been studied. Likewise, I suspect there are correlations between mental subjective experience and what jobs people take. More research is needed, clearly. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology)
        photojosh 8y ago
        I wonder how much of the mental thought process is genetic vs learned, because I can totally relate to your description. You mention colour, which is interesting, because I was never attuned to colour until I worked as a photographer for a decade where it actually matters beyond just symbolism (ie blue sky = nice day, red light = stop). Now it is often prevalent in my thought process. I would say my own thinking is a wild mix of language, maths ('just' another language really), graphs and other visual representations. Nigh impossible to form it into a coherent linear narrative.

Symmetry 8y ago

Huh, published in 1976. Somehow I'd assumed that this sort of hypothesis would have been proposed back in the 1930s when it's assumptions would have been a lot more credible.

geofft 8y ago
As Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion, "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets."
- Symmetry 8y ago
  I'm really surprised that he and Dennet are so positive on the idea. In the humans running around today we can do experiments on we can clearly see that it's the same process that allows us to serialize experiences for to speak about them and serialize them to remember them. But I suppose before fMRI that work might not have been as convincing. And I suppose, as someone who does a lot of thinking without an internal narrative I feel a bit attacked by the whole idea.
  - knolax 8y ago
    >And I suppose, as someone who does a lot of thinking without an internal narrative I feel a bit attacked by the whole idea. When ideas like this and Sapir-Whorf pop up it really makes me wonder if maybe the social "sciences" are studied exclusively by some subset of the population that thinks entirely different from me. How else would they come to the conclusion that thoughts take the form of articulated monologues? Maybe I'm the outlier but it takes deliberate effort for me to serialize my thoughts into anything articulate. I mean do other people just hear "I didn't give the correct arguments to this function" in their head when they code?
    - sebastos 8y ago
      I doubt they do, but have you never had a sort of "heart-to-heart with yourself"? I'll sometimes take a walk with the explicit intention of having a good think, and whenever I do that, my thoughts absolutely take the form of internal monologue. I think if you're really thinking something through, on a subject you haven't really explored, the 'voice' manifests. Just my .02.
      - Symmetry 8y ago
        People are different. There's a wide variety of extents to which people perceive their thoughts as comprising of words and also a wide variety of extents to which people are able to form mental imagery. For me, most thinking isn't verbal unless I'm thinking of explaining my thoughts to some one else. Sometimes this is annoying when I've worked something out for myself and I go to explain it but then this nice chunked[1] concept for a step but when I hit that concept I realize it doesn't correspond to a word and I have to go on a long, unexpected digression. But sometimes there are words for which I haven't chunked the underlying concept well and I just use that word in isolation inside my head. Also, some seem to be basically unable to form mental imagery and often assume that people are speaking in metaphor when they describe this. Some people are able to form mental imagery with fairly high fidelity to what their eyes see with very little effort. Personally I have an easy time with shapes but things don't tend to have colors unless I make a conscious effort. I sort of suspect that people who refer to people by name inside their heads have an easier time remembering names but AFAIK it hasn't been studied. Likewise, I suspect there are correlations between mental subjective experience and what jobs people take. More research is needed, clearly. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology)
        photojosh 8y ago
        I wonder how much of the mental thought process is genetic vs learned, because I can totally relate to your description. You mention colour, which is interesting, because I was never attuned to colour until I worked as a photographer for a decade where it actually matters beyond just symbolism (ie blue sky = nice day, red light = stop). Now it is often prevalent in my thought process. I would say my own thinking is a wild mix of language, maths ('just' another language really), graphs and other visual representations. Nigh impossible to form it into a coherent linear narrative.